Diogo Ribeiro

Is that the Kanadian version of ROFLWTFBBQ?

Gods: Lands of Infinity or somesuch, right? Tried the demo, urghed, moved on. Anyway: Urghing as I go.

Yes. Like the brothels.

Though I'd much prefer to see a Chtulhu CRPG.

This is true. There are only five clans now: Daeva (akin to Toreadors), Gangrel, Mekhet, Nosferatu, and Ventrue. Not having played the original roleplaying game I don't know if the Malkavian departure is necessarily bad, but I enjoyed them in the Masquerade adaptation so it's a shame to see them go. I don't know much about Requiem in itself but wouldn't mind seeing a CRPG adaptation of it, or other White Wolf settings.

Both were unfinished and released in that state regardless. That was as far as the comparison was meant to go. Temple of Elemental Evil was in a far worse state than The Sith Lords, yes. Although looking back at the majority of bugs, they were mostly data entry types, something that could probably have been fixed in perhaps a week (perhaps the very week it was released earlier? who knows).

There's no distress in my posts. I gave my opinion, and someone saw fit to keep going at it despite me having said "to each his own". I didn't press anyone for an answer until I was pressed for one. I also explained why: Another example: And I explained this, in other words, several times (that which you dismissed as repetition in the links I provided, for instance). Now, if you would like to tell me I poorly explained the issue then do so, and I'll try to be clearer. But don't bother telling me I haven't explained my point of view because it's simply not true. Irrelevant since a strategy guide remains outside the context of a game and is metagaming. That's not what I do at all when playing Deus Ex. Really? So, when I stated that "While we would probably disagree on just how much player skills are required in order to infuse personality in a CRPG character, I'm simply pointing out that there are issues when both things are allowed to clash together and that they usually tend to bring down the importance of a character's role.", how much does that stray from the notion that twitch and statistic based gameplay can be awkward? Reading is the new cool.

Precisely It's not that far from what I would conceptually want from a game that presents a notion of a character role. I don't want automation, but I see little use in having the game require my direct input when it shows me a character spreadsheet detailing how well the PC succeeds in this or that skill. Of course, crafting a personality is achieved in multiple ways and some times my input is all but required (particularly in the examples you gave such as choosing dialogue lines, or making combat decisions), but most of the time numbers just get in the way of reflexes; there are probably better ways of handling this, and that's why I supported Deus Ex's take on movement exclusively depending on the player's direct input rather than an abstracted notion of Dexterity that would get in the way of my reflexes, or vice versa. Same applies to your previous example of Morrowind which I alluded to. I don't have much against the game's skill system. The issue of Rifles was a loose example of how sometimes numbers and reflexes just don't work that well together that some saw fit to blow out of proportion. The same happens in Bloodlines and I've criticized it as well since both systems are similar (amusingly enough, I'm not the only one to mention the clunkiness inherent in combining both twitch and stat-based gameplay), but I've never criticized it when it works. The high level skills generally work best because there is a much better flow of combat and players with slower reflexes gain some help in the form of character expertise. I merely brought up the system because I find the differences at lower levels are greater and more damaging to the gameplay, as well as the notion of a division between character and player. But otherwise there's not much else to it I would complain about the system (asides Hacking, which I think would benefit from randomly generating usernames and passwords for non-critical computer systems to avoid metagaming in the form of replaying with foreknowledge of the data fields, but that's got nothing to do with player reflexes or character skill).

Once. Twice. Doesn't get any shorter or clearer than that. Where are these other people? How many people in this thread have expressed they can't move a mouse down when a recoiling assault rifle is going up onscreen? One until now, and if my credibility is at stake then so must be his considering neither of us provided any kind of evidence other than our words. At least I described in detail what I did exactly. I'm still waiting to be told how "I tried it, didn't work, so whatever" constitutes as a valid refutal. Also, how does moving a mouse in the opposite direction of a 3D model onscreen constitute an amazing feat? It's no different nor harder than pressing the down arrow key - or the S key if you use WASD - to have JC Denton run backwards. Are you also going to insist in the idiotic notion that this requires great feats of dexterity or Counterstrike skills?

Paraphrasing doesn't promote misconception of a simple concept. Expectation is different from preference. Deus Ex is one of my favorite games ever. This doesn't mean I enjoy all facets of its gameplay. No need to bring this up since it wasn't a point of dissent. Working as intended or designed doesn't mean its flawless or beyond reproach. You should blame it on Ion Storm for not coming up with a better way to enforce penalties, not me for having found out the obvious.

How exactly does "I don't enjoy that type of design but can tolerate it" even get near "I am quite pleased with dealing with"? If you don't particularly care for what I'm writing you're not obliged to answer back or even discuss it. But if you're going to I'd appreciate it if you managed to get the basics of what I'm saying. Which was... Wait, I've got an idea. Here's the issue framed in smaller paragraphs. I prefer to interact with a gameworld via my own skills or those of a character instead of both. I prefer to have my skills succeed because of me, or those of a character succeed because of itself, rather than having to deal with abstractions of both and seeing the game choke up because of it. Aiming is hard?

Or I would be involved in intense firefights as well, which happened several times. Those don't last much in Realistic but they do provide for excellent hit-and-run tactics while they do; for those I usually take the high difficulty mode prior to Realistic. What are the odds of a highly trained character without direct player input in the form of aiming successfully hitting an enemy, as opposed to the odds of a highly trained character whose aiming is controlled by a player with slow reflexes and overall poor marksmanship? Uh, you're basically repeating what I've a couple of tims in the thread. I've stated several times that my skill wasn't superhuman (contrary to popular belief held by idiots) and that there were still considerable penalties to the Assault and Sniper Rifle's accuracy, but that I still managed to find a way to get away from its basic form of penalty (ie, wobbling and severe recoil effects). Of course that the damage and accuracy penalties are still there in Untrained level because I didn't improve the skill; all I simply did was "wrestle" against the trajectory of the weapon or sniper sights when they recoiled or wobbled.

I think a lot of the pre-3E Forgotten Realms materials (FR Adventures hardcover, the various Volo's guides, etc.) are all available on the WotC website for free download. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks Josh, I'll be sure to look into it

Is there freely available official D&D material on the internet for these kinds of places? They seem like interesting choices for module making but I know nothing about these settings.

Lol the real world is irrelevant when discussing game mechanics unless those mechanics are meant to in any way be realistic. And this isn't the case with neither game. And this happens because that's how the skill system works and is meant to work, not because I've found a way to break the rules. There's a bit of difference between taking modifiers into account when handling a combat situation to get different results with each new roll and finding a way to artificially influence those modifiers to get a favorable result with each new roll. Semantics. The game pretty much states that the recoil, or other associated weapon modifiers, will be hard to handle the less points you have into a skill. It very much is telling players they can't handle a firearm without penalties. Which is true - just not when it comes to Rifles. Lol how many times are you going to lie about what I say? I've said I managed to overcome some of the limitations. Yes, the sniper sights still wobble but not as much. Yes, the Assault Rifle still has a violent recoil but not as much. Where's the leetness in that? You were the only one to bark about me having uber Counterstrike skills and amazingly, are now going for the second time claiming I've made this claim. You're getting even more pathetic then I thought possible, and that's no small feat. Because quite simply one doesn't compromise the other. If the player or the character take the back seat temporarily then they have no chance of providing mixed results that will either cancel or screw each other. No big mistery or contradiction there. Having a game tell me that it will be based on two different methods of input (character statistics and layer reflexes) to determine how an obstacle is handled is going to bring more issues than temporarily placing the player or the PC in the background. In fact, if you can imagine how this would work if we were talking about the character's intelligence and the player's intelligence being used simultaneously instead, it's not much of a stretch to figure out why this is preferable.

Do a barrel roll!

In my experience, whether I get ill or not from playing a 3D game depends on how the screen is rendered. I don't know what there is, but some games, especially older ones, could make me feel queasy after awhile. Doom on a faster computer is a good example, and the original '3D' Wolfenstein (and its clones) are other examples. Perhaps there is a fisheye effect involved or some other rendering method that distorts the view while I'm looking around. Modern FPSs don't have that effect on me. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've had similar situations with Alien vs. Predator and Blood 2, but I was fine with Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

But not when it's published. Publishers generally agree with developers on a release date but if a game requires more testing or polish, publishers are still free to release it when they see fit. And were Troika given the chance to develop more patches?

They were ambitious, didn't always implement their ideas very well, and the games suffered from this. But you're forgetting that publishers have the final say about a game. Temple of Elemental Evil was sucking on Atari's financial tit and apparently causing some problems since the more you delay a game the more the publisher suffers with this, but as a publisher Atari knew full well the state of the game. Yet they chose to release it. While I'm not excusing Troika for their mistakes - which were rampant - the decision to ship unpolished games was not theirs. It sure wasn't Obsidian's decision to ship The Sith Lords in such a dire state, either.

The player's direct control over a character during combat only poses a problem when a system allows direct player control to override any skill or ability that defines said character. As alanschu pointed out, Morrowind stands as a point of contradiction between these two elements, as a player could use his reflexes to shoot back at someone with a bow but some character statistic determined that there was no hit despite the player having fired at point blank. Hence why I've stated my preference over a system that manages to include both elements but does not shortchange neither the player nor undermines the notion of a character. On the other hand, the player's control during non-combat situations only poses a problem when a system allows a character's role to remain neutered by allowing all hardships to be solved by the player when the character has the means to do so himself. I already gave examples on a previous post, so I won't go into it again. As I said I don't enjoy these situations but can live with them - not because of preference or bias or somesuch - but because the character is not in the same risk. Its integrity as a character is still there. In Fallout, a PC with low skill levels at Science may not be able to understand scientific gibberish on some computer. And there's nothing the player can do to go around this rule of the mechanics. He can only increase the character's skills, or if the situation was devised to do this, he could find alternate means to understand what is there. But the player could never, only within the context of playing the game, access the information that the PC could not see for himself. The game tells you the PC can't do something and he can't. Now compare to Deus Ex and the present situation being discussed. By comparison which do you think provides a more coherent system - the game that presents limitations to a character and the player must play with those limitations, or a game that presents limitations to a character but the player can break them? You could always counter that in Baldur's Gate 2, PCs with low or high Int scores were useless when it came to answering riddles because these obstacles were aimed at the player exclusively. But here the game doesn't tell you anything, there is no rule associated with this. Nothing ever states "You can't understand this riddle therefore you cannot answer it". No, I don't enjoy this design but at least it's conscious and knows who it's targetting. It doesn't tell you "You can't do this" and then allows you to. Where's the contradiction?

Uh, yes. Welcome to 1999, and thank you for being the only one who didn't fail their Reading check. These are not situations I enjoy but can live with. Theoretically, an oafish Orc probably wouldn't spot traps or be able to solve puzzles. Meanwhile, a genius-like character could (and should) probably solve a riddle or puzzle on his own depending on much knowlede of the surrounding environments he has. But these can already be dealt with in some degree which while not optimal can be satisfying nonetheless.

Abstracted vs. direct control. Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout. It's possible. They pretty much maintain the necessary levels and differences between player control and character role. I'm not asking for a complete separation of both, neither would I want to. I want games that go for attempts at combining a sense of character and direct player into the same context to do a better job, or at least a coherent one.

Grenades, ballistic armor, using the environments for cover or to distract hostiles (ie, light, sound), speed or cloaking augmentations seem to work just fine. Would guiding a nuclear warhead yourself while adjusting its trajectory in realtime and seeing it all through an inbuilt camera in the nuke be any different than, say, a turnbased game where you deploy the nuke and have to contend with the nuke's attack power and the country's defense rating? Is guiding an invading army against a nearby region in HoI: Doomsday any different than guiding those soldiers across an FPS scenario where the invading success was determined by how quickly you fired? I would have to say yes. I didn't claim it would completely go around the skill system, just given limitations. And going around certain limitations doesn't mean it will go around all of them, does it. The lack of accuracy and attack power are still in place but you can circumvent some of the base limitations by doing what I did.

But the player can adapt to the recoil of a shotgun by improving the character's skill. Is there really an enjoyment to be had in learning how to master a skill by not mastering it at all, and just going around its restrictions? The game presents you with a minor challenge. Should you want to have a smaller recoil when using Assault Rifles you need to improve the Rifles skill. You then learn how to use it and adapt to the initially violent recoil. Then you figure out that the you can improve said accuracy without much challenge in acquiring and spending points - all you need to do is perform a movement opposite to that of the weapon's recoil. I can find no enjoyment in that, sorry. I would if I fought long and hard to obtain the necessary points to dump into it and thus improve it, though.

Crossdressing as a werewolf, no less!